


In A Better World

by thegingermidget



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Emotional Manipulation, Eventual Romance, F/F, Kind of enemies to lovers, Mind Control, cabin in the woods, takes place after 5x07
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-14
Updated: 2019-12-27
Packaged: 2021-02-26 01:01:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,947
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21784894
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thegingermidget/pseuds/thegingermidget
Summary: Lena knows what she wants and she knows exactly how to get it. Kara finding out about her experiments wasn't part of the plan but Lena has always been resourceful. Her timeline might have shifted forward but that doesn't mean things still won't go her way. Kidnapping Supergirl wasn't part of the plan but maybe that's how things were meant to work out all along.
Relationships: Kara Danvers/Lena Luthor
Comments: 30
Kudos: 174





	1. Chapter 1

Lena knows what to do in a crisis. She’s good under pressure. She’s just never had to deal with a crisis quite like this one. 

“We’ve got to go,” Lena says, stepping out of the portal without preamble. L Corp isn’t safe for her anymore, not now that Supergirl knows. 

Hope blinks at her sudden appearance and her briskness, but she springs into action despite her questions. 

“Pack up the mobile unit, the test model, and one of the tablets with the project files backed up onto it,” Lena rattled off to her while she made her own preparations. The Kryptonite gas wouldn’t hold Supergirl forever. No matter what she did now she was only buying herself time. 

“What happened?” Hope asks, even as she does what Lena ordered. 

“Our timeline has moved up slightly, but I have a plan.” Lena grabs a few crucial tools and stuffs them into a bag. The prototype needs a few physical tweaks and a minor reprogramming, but they should be about ready for a test run. They have to be, Lena might not survive a failure. “We’re leaving, headed to a remote location to finish our work.”

“Understood,” says Hope and Lena is gladder than ever that she had Hope installed in Eve’s consciousness. 

This seems like a crisis that should belong to her brother. There’s an odd moment of dissociation Lena feels as she readies everything she needs. She watches her hands move to grab the next piece of equipment and shove it in a travel case. She feels herself moving towards the portal generator. For a moment though, it doesn’t feel like these actions are her own. She moves without thinking, stowing her feelings somewhere else for a time. 

In under ten minutes, they condense their entire operation and send it and themselves through Lex’s portal generator. Lena knew that she should feel some sort of relief, they were out of National City, she had bought them time. The woods surrounding the cabin were quiet and still. This should be a peaceful place, she shouldn’t have this gnawing at her heart and bile rising in her throat.

“Lena, are you sure this is where you want to do this? We could go somewhere else.”

Lena shakes herself of a cold sweat and forces herself to look at Hope and nothing else. She needs to focus. She can’t let herself get carried away.

“The rest of the equipment we need is here. It’s remote, but it has a laboratory. This was Lex’s bolt hole once and now its mine.”

“But this place holds other memories for you, ones you might find distracting.”

Lena scowls. She has yet to figure out how to make Hope less patronizing. “I’ll have plenty of other things to distract me.”

The cabin has a crawlspace turned laboratory underneath and that’s where Lena makes the final adjustments. She has only minutes to get this right and if she can’t manage it she might as well be doomed.

“Lena, what are you doing? This isn’t what we discussed, why did you-”

The security alarms on the property sound off before Lena can answer. It was only a matter of time, Lena is just lucky she had enough time to finish up.

“Get in the containment chamber, now,” Lena says, already packing things up. She doesn’t want it to look as though she was working on anything just now, she needs every little chance at surprise she can give herself. 

Hope does as told and Lena seals her up. The containment chamber is meant to be a sterile unit for experiments and medical procedures but it also functions as a safe or a prison. Lex was nothing if not paranoid and wanted to be able to hide his experiments at a moment’s notice, even from the likes of Superman. The small room was lined in lead, not found in the plans for the cabin, and undetectable to anyone who didn’t already know it was there. 

Lena heard footsteps on the floorboards above her. The lab underneath might have been state of the art but the little house above was old and rustic, giving no indication as to what lay underneath. Supergirl would find her, sooner rather than later, and all Lena had to do was wait. She palmed the small circle of metal in her hand and tried to calm her speeding heart. 

She turns herself away from the main entrance to the secret laboratory even as she hears Supergirl’s cautious footsteps padding down the stairs. Lena is reminded of the last time she stood here, with Lex dying in the chair in front of her. There is still the faintest trace of blood in the line of the tiles on the floor. She had spent hours trying to get it out weeks ago, but try as she might she couldn’t get rid of it. 

“Lena?” Supergirl says her name like a question, as though there could be anyone else but her here. Who did she expect to find? Her brother?

Lena doesn’t answer. She has no words left for Supergirl. She doesn’t care what Supergirl has to say to her now, what she thinks of her. Supergirl might believe that the foolish girl she knew might still have some good in her, some naivete left with which to forgive her. Lena knows that part of her is gone and will never be again. 

“Lena, what are you doing here? What have you done? Where’s Myriad?”

Lena turns partially, gracing her with a side profile of her face. Let her see the hurt that lies there, the betrayal she still feels. “Haven’t you and the DEO gone through my things at L Corp? All of the answers are still there where I left them.”

“Lena, I haven’t told anyone about what happened in the Fortress of Solitude. I went looking for you because I wanted you to explain. I’m not about to treat you like a villain if you insist you aren’t one.”

Supergirl is giving her the benefit of the doubt. How sad for her when she realizes that Lena doesn’t need it.

“You want to see my work? The things I’ve been keeping from you for weeks, nearly months now? Fine.” She moves over to one of the lab tables and pulls up the device’s schematics. She’s been practicing this presentation in her head for weeks now, the real thing simply came up sooner than she had anticipated. “I have been hurt over and over again. By my mother, by Lex, and finally by you. I couldn’t understand why we humans insist upon hurting each other and the ones we love over and over again. Even I have fallen prey to that same impulse in this very room.

‘I decided that there must be something wrong with us, some internal self-destructive desire that makes us hurt the ones we love and I knew that with some of the advances made in the field of mind-mapping, cognitive therapy, and alien mind-control, things could change.”

She pulls up her initial plans, the alterations she made to Andrea’s technology. Then she flashes forward to the implant she gave Eve. Lena knows that Supergirl only understands the bare bones of these technical drawings, but she shows them to her anyway. If ever there were a time for total and complete honesty, it is now. 

“Lena, that’s not true. We don’t hurt each other on purpose. It’s mistakes and circumstance— the complicated process of trying to do the best for the ones we love—”

“I’d appreciate it if you didn’t interrupt me,” Lena says, her voice empty of emotion. “You asked to see my work and I’m showing you.”

Supergirl’s mouth hardens into a line, but she doesn’t say another word. 

“I didn’t want to change who people were and I didn’t want to control them. I wanted to make people incapable of doing harm to each other.” Lena turns away from the screen and the floating projections hovering above the lab table. She turns to Kara and appeals to her for the first time. “Can you imagine that? A world where people cannot hurt each other? There would be no war, no crime, no pain. There could peace for the first time in humanity’s existence. You and your cousin would be out of a job.” She laughs, bitterly. “You would be free to be Kara Danvers once again.”

“But Lena—”

“There is no argument you can make to say that a world like that would be a bad thing. If you’re against it, that’s only because you are a part of the system that makes its living out of hurting and oppressing the weak. But I don’t think that’s true of you, Kara. No matter what I thought of you, no matter how much I hated you, I never thought that was true.”

Supergirl seems lost now. No longer burning bright with righteous anger. No longer with a witty retort sitting on the tip of her tongue, a reporter’s skill. Supergirl is confused and conflicted, just as Lena meant her to be. 

“With one fell swoop, with the skill and intelligence that always defined me as a Luthor, as someone evil and suspect, I can save the world.” Lena bites her lip and steps forward towards Kara. She moves slowly, hesitantly. She isn’t afraid of Kara not now, but she doesn’t want to do anything that might scare her away. 

The lab is still and the air is heavy as Lena makes her way forward. Supergirl watches her cautiously, but her expression is soft and curious. 

Taking that as a sign of approval or at least interest, Lena pushes on. “I remember all of those times we were in danger, all of those times you ran off on me, all of those times I tried my best to protect you. It’s hard for me to look back and try to correct those memories. Each time I thought we were in danger, each time I risked my life to protect us, Supergirl was always ready in the wings, waiting to fly in when I failed. But heroes can’t save the world, not the way I can. Let me save you, Kara.” 

Lena reaches out and takes Kara’s hand. It’s warm and soft, gentle for something that could inflict so much harm. Lena smiles. 

“So what do you say, Kara Danvers? Do you want to save the world?”

There is still reluctance in Kara’s eyes. There is still fear and confusion lingering there. She doesn’t know what to say to this plan that Lena has unleashed on her. She sees the good in it, even if she knows she cannot allow it to continue. Lena can see in her face that she is trying to work out exactly how to tell her no. Kara just needs the right weaseling words to ply her with and is trying her best to collect them.

Lena reaches up and brushes a wave of hair back behind Kara’s ear. She has never touched Supergirl so intimately before. With Kara, she would have had no qualms about taking such liberties, but Supergirl has always been so strong and impenetrable. When Kara leans into her touch as she lets her hand caress her cheek, Lena is reminded of the feisty reporter who had broken through her walls years ago. She can see the connection between the two of them now, Kara and Supergirl, but she doesn’t think she was naive to have missed it for so long. 

Kara is sweet and kind. She is honest and inquisitive. She is righteous and persistent. She is underestimated and always struggling to do better, go farther, and find the truth. Supergirl was always a blank wall. A symbol rather than a person, someone who couldn’t break. 

And yet they were one and the same. Supergirl leans into Lena’s touch even as Kara tries to work out how to tell her no. It breaks Lena’s heart to see the similarity in this laboratory of all places, where she had tried her hardest to convince herself that it was just another one of Lex’s lies.

In the end, it is the thought of Lex that gives her the strength to go through with what she had planned all along. 

She places the small metal disk at Kara’s temple and it implants itself immediately. It burrows into her skin, and disguises itself, turning the same color as her skin. 

Lena watches the transformation on Kara’s face. There’s an expression Lena can’t decipher that shifts to confusion and then horror and then nothing. There is an emptiness behind Kara’s eyes that Lena hadn’t prepared herself for, that startles her, before Kara begins to fade. Her eyes close and her knees weaken, and it’s all Lena can do to hold her up before she collapses. They make their way to the floor together, more gently than falling and Lena kneels down with Kara’s head in her lap.

Her hands hold up Kara’s head and shoulders, keeping her buoyant locks of blonde hair from sweeping the ground. Her thumb brushes small, slow circles on Kara’s shoulder. Lena wonders if she would even be able to feel such a gesture through the suit.

“Hope!” Lena calls out. “You can come out now. I need your help with our guest.”


	2. Chapter 2

Kara wakes slowly, not all at once. First, she hears voices, echoing, bouncing off the walls of the room, maybe from inside her own head. Then her eyes flicker. She sees light and color but no shape. Her eyes close and she might have gone under again, it’s hard for her to figure out how long she has been unconscious. She realizes then that she has fallen unconscious, but there is little for her to do about it before that awareness is taken from her again. 

When she opens her eyes next and is able to keep them open, she begins to make sense of her surroundings. A bed, wood-paneled walls, a window letting in the light of a cloudy sky, tree branches swaying in a gentle breeze. She fingers clean cotton sheets and wonders whose bed this is.

“You’re awake.”

“Lena.” It is her first word awake, the only thing she can make sense of just yet. Her voice rasps in her throat, causing her to wonder just how long it’s been since she has used it. 

“How do you feel?”

At first, this seems like an odd question but then memories of the events that lead up to her collapse and the collapse itself attempt to flood her all at once and she almost feels like lying down again. The rush of memory leaves her as quickly as it came and very little stays behind to let her know what exactly is going on.

“What happened?” Kara asks. She knows that isn’t the answer Lena wants but she doesn’t have any answers for Lena yet. Just more questions than she knows what to do with.

“I’ve made breakfast downstairs if you’re hungry,” Lena says instead of answering. Fine. Two can play at this game. “Scrambled eggs and toast. Not my best work, but my talents have always been in other areas.”

Kara thinks that will be it. Lena will turn around and leave her to whatever situation she now finds herself in. At first, Lena does exactly that. She turns to leave, letting their best attempt at a conversation trail off at the end like a loose thread. Even she seems to get the sense that something is missing here, though, and her hand trails along the edge of the doorframe. 

“I’m glad you’re alright,” Lena says over her shoulder. She is paused in the doorway, unable to make eye contact with Kara as she speaks, and then she leaves. She pads down the hall silently and once she is out of sight it is as though she was never there.

What happened? The question clouds her mind almost more than anything. Almost. She still feels as though there is a fog surrounding her. Every thought has to fight its way through a mist and a haze in order to make itself known. She can’t be sure what that means for her yet. 

There is a hollow feeling in the pit of her stomach and an ache in her legs she assumes is from disuse. Breakfast seems like the perfect remedy even though she is suspicious of Lena. Even though she is unsure why that suspicion is there. Something is strange about all of this, if only she could remember why. If only she could think.

Kara wobbles slightly as she makes her way out of bed and down to the kitchen. Nothing about this place is familiar to her and she finds her way to the kitchen more out of instinct and common sense than anything else. Downstairs, things are more familiar to her. She doesn’t remember where she is or why. She knows that this place must belong to Lena, but why they are here, in a cabin in the middle of nowhere and not, say, Lena’s apartment eludes her. 

She gets the sense that something bad has happened. That bit of intuition seems to be the product of more common sense than memory. She has never felt so uneasy and strange. As a Kryptonian, she’s never fallen prey to Earth’s illnesses before so this state she is in is easily the worst she has ever felt outside of battle. It doesn’t come close to kryptonite, but it leaves her feeling off-kilter.

The thought of kryptonite sparks something in her. A memory of the Fortress of Solitude. Surrounded by ice, choking on air, and a feeling of betrayal. It’s coming back to her now in bits and pieces. She doesn’t remember what happened to her or what put her in this state, but at least Kara she is beginning to remember why she is here. 

She only comes to this realization as she sits down at the center island in the kitchen. Lena is there in front of her, tending to the eggs in the pan on the stove. Part of her wants to turn right back around, head back upstairs and forget about all of this but she’s here now and she might as well face what is coming to her. She has never been one to run from a fight. 

“You made it,” Lena says, turning from the stove with the pan in her hands. The eggs are still sizzling as she plates them. “It took you a while, I wasn’t sure you were coming down.”

“I’m here,” says Kara, as though that isn’t obvious by now.

“Hungry?” 

“Starved.” 

Lena slides a plate to her across the kitchen island complete with a slice of toast cut into triangles. Then she fixes her own with a dollop of ketchup for her eggs and grape jam on her toast.

“Juice?” Lena heads over to the refrigerator and begins putting some of her ingredients away.

Kara can’t help but feel strange. This is too casual, too normal. Everything about her being here, the way she feels, and what Lena has done is so far beyond what Kara is used to. To be sitting here at a kitchen table, with Lena and the ketchup she just put beside her eggs, is almost too much for her to handle. 

She says yes to some orange juice.

“What is this place?” Kara asks between mouthfuls. She hadn’t been kidding, whatever dizzy spell had come over her had left her drained and hungry. 

“This used to be Lex’s cabin,” Lena says. Unlike Kara, she takes her time with her eggs. “Before that, we used to come here as children. I think my parents hid us here when things seemed unpredictable. A way of keeping us safe.”

“You think?”

“We were little. They didn’t tell us they were in trouble with the authorities, they told us we were going on vacation.”

“Oh.” Kara isn’t sure why she asked that. The last thing she wants to do is to make Lena upset. She decides to try another tack. “What are we doing here now?” 

Lena shrugs. “I happen to find myself in a bit of trouble with the authorities.”

Kara still doesn’t quite understand what she is doing here. She doesn’t know if she can trust Lena. When her own thoughts and memories have failed her, can she trust someone who may have tried to hurt her? She remembers the way the Kryptonite gas burned in her lungs, each breath sending poison down her throat. It wasn’t the same as simply being in the presence of Kryptonite. The gas was not just around her, it was inside her, eating away at her vital organs and the membranes of her throat and lungs. Death by Kryptonite gas was slow and painful. Each poisoned breath made her condition worse. She instinctively gasped for another, as though she might somehow find clean air to take the pain away. She might have died if Alex and Brainy hadn’t found her. 

But then Kara remembers the rest of Lena, their whole friendship before that day. She remembers how often Lena chose the good, how often Lena had the chance to give in, how easy it would have been. 

If Kara can’t trust Lena, she can’t trust anyone. 

“Lena,” Kara begins. “What happened? Why are we here? What have you done?”

Lena’s eyes widen for a moment before she takes control of herself again. She sets her fork down carefully. “You mean you don’t remember?”

“No, I remember the Fortress of Solitude, I remember being trapped… but those memories aren’t connected somehow. I don’t know why you left me there or why I came here. It feels like something bad… but I know you wouldn’t have done that without a good reason. I just can’t imagine what that reason would be.”

Lena doesn’t rush to fill in the details. She takes a moment to herself before continuing. “Interesting. There was a chance that the procedure could induce temporary memory loss. With your powers, I wasn’t sure that particular side effect would take hold. Are you feeling alright?”

No, Kara wants to say, but she holds herself back. She wants to trust Lena, wants to believe that all of this is for the right reasons but her heart breaks to know that she did this to her and she doesn’t seem to care.

Lena comes around to the side of the counter slowly. The length of marble countertop no longer separates them. 

“Just a bit tired,” Kara says, feeling slightly defensive. “And concerned that I’m having trouble remembering things that are clearly important.”

“Clearly,” Lena echoes. “When you’re up to it, you’ll have to come downstairs so we can talk about what you’re feeling, what you remember. I’ll have to make note of it for the next trial.”

That stings Kara more than anything else she’s heard or remembered. The idea that this is nothing more than an experiment to Lena, that she isn’t a friend, that she isn’t a person even. 

“What are you talking about, what trial?” Kara’s head hurts, the beginnings of a headache. She’s never felt something like that before.

Lena pauses, considering the situation before sighing. “I suppose there’s no point in keeping it from you. You would have found out soon enough. The reason you collapsed, the reason you woke up feeling ill, the reason you’re experiencing a headache right now,” Kara scowls, disliking the idea that she had been obvious. “I implanted my latest feat of engineering into your head, an inhibitor. You may not remember it now, but two days ago I told you all about my plan to make the world a better place.”

“I don’t remember.” 

“Right,” Lena continues. “But you do remember the Fortress of Solitude. Do you remember what I took?”

“Myriad,” Kara supplies, feeling a bit like she is back in a classroom. ”You’re working on mind control?”

Lena leans forward her hand cupping Kara’s cheek and thumb resting just at her temple. But Kara doesn’t want to be touched right now. She feels prickly, somehow, like she cannot let herself get comfortable. She brushes Lena’s hand away, but keeps her close. She looks up into Lena’s eyes defiantly. 

Lena frowns. “Not mind control. I don’t want to make anyone do anything they don’t want to do, I’m not a monster. My goal is to keep people from harming others, to restrict them rather than motivate them, and that device is my first step towards achieving that end.”

“But how does it work? How do you use mind control to stop people from hurting each other? Hurting each other in what way?” Kara feels her face flush as she gets more and more worked up over this. Slowly, she’s remembering bits and pieces of their conversation from two days ago. Two days ago? She had been out for two days?

Kara sputters for a moment on the idea that not only did this device in her head knock her out for two days but she has been gone for two days and the DEO hasn’t managed to find her yet. 

She tries to collect herself and fails, fails miserably. “I know I hurt you, Lena. I know that by keeping my identity a secret from you, I betrayed your trust and our friendship, but how is controlling the world’s population going to change that?” Kara stands, knocking over the metal stool she was sitting on with a clatter. “How would this device have kept me from hurting you? Would it have compelled the truth from me? How is something like that not evil?”

Kara feels a stinging in her eyes and she doesn’t think it is her heat vision. She turns away from Lena, staring at the discarded metal stool on the floor. There’s a hand at her shoulder that she shrugs off. She should go. Fly away from here, bring back the DEO and arrest Lena for everything she has done and has yet to do. 

But Kara spares another look at the stool on the ground. The noise it had made as it fell was loud. It surprised Kara and jolted her for a moment. She had tossed it aside by accident, the product of a moment of sudden anger and frustration. In a moment like that, she usually had to hold herself back, remain conscious of the fact that she was so strong at all times. 

But she hadn’t. They had been fighting. This whole morning had thrown Kara off balance. That niggling feeling of responsibility and restriction in the back of her mind wasn’t there. She could have thrown that chair through the wall, into the next county. 

But she hadn’t. That metal stool sits stubbornly on the ground in front of her, not three feet away from where she now stood. 

Kara gapes at it for a moment, the pieces coming together. 

She spares one glance at Lena before running for the door. It isn’t locked, it swings open under her grip even if it doesn’t fly off of its hinges as she had intended. 

Lena calls after her as Kara runs, off of the porch and into the open field that spreads out like a green sea in front of the cabin. The sky is gray and solid above her, the trees she had seen outside of her bedroom window only surround the back and sides of the cabin. Here, the air is clear and the sky is hers. She reaches up into the air and leaps to take to it—

—And falls.

Panic starts to set in. It had driven her out of the cabin, it forced her to attempt to fly, even though panic knew the reason she was so scared was the only reason it would never work. She had started to panic because she suspected her powers weren’t working. She ran and she tried to fly and she learned the truth.

Lena walks over to her slowly and comes to stand next to her in the tall grass of the field. There is no need for her to rush, there is nowhere for Kara to go.

Kara is trapped. 

She pulls her knees to her chest as she sits down in the grass. Her eyes are wide and her breathing is heavy. She can’t quite keep it under control. Her backside is wet from where she landed in the soft earth. It must have rained last night. That is what she manages to notice even as Lena wraps her arms around her. 

They stay like that for a while, until Kara’s breathing is back under control, until her eyes drift closed, until the sky darkens slightly and it begins to rain.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! You can find me on twitter [@a_ginger_midget](https://twitter.com/a_ginger_midget) and on tumblr [@thegingermidget](https://thegingermidget.tumblr.com/). I'd love to start posting sneak peaks if that's something people are interested in and I'd love to talk about this ship with people, so come find me on twitter and tumblr!


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a quick note, I updated the tags on this fic and the overall number of chapters. I wanted to be clear that the relationship might be a little bit more problematic or dark than people are used to or expect from this pairing. Things are not all sunshine and daisies here, there are some real issues with trust and manipulation going on and this fic going to deal with those things. The number of total chapters has been upped from 5 to 7. I definitely felt like we weren't past the halfway point with this chapter but we're getting there. Enjoy!

A small red light appears in the corner of the main monitor’s screen. It’s a large piece of equipment hanging on a wall just off to their side. Lena adjusts herself in her chair, sitting opposite Kara. Kara doesn’t move at all. She is deadly calm and absolutely serious. 

Lena clears her throat and begins speaking. “Kara Danvers, aka Supergirl. Inhibitor test subject one.” Then she turns to Kara and her face relaxes into an expression of concern. “How are you feeling?”

Kara scowls. “Do we really have to do this?”

“It’s important for my research, we’ve been over this.”

“I don’t want to help you with your research, your work is evil.” Kara folds her arms across her chest but she doesn’t move. She’s going to do this, she just wants to make her dissension clear. “Does she have to be here for this?”

They both turn to look at Hope standing off to the side, trying to look inconspicuous. 

Lena shrugs. “I suppose she doesn’t. Hope, if you wouldn’t mind heading upstairs while we do this?”

“Are you sure you won’t need my help? There is still a chance she could be dangerous.”

“We’ll be fine, Hope, thank you.”

“Yes, Ms. Luthor.”

“Is that better?” Lena asks once Hope is gone, back upstairs and out of sight. 

“Thank you oh so much,” Kara says sarcastically, with about as much spite as she been able to manage over the course of the last day or so. 

“I care about you, Kara. I would have asked you these questions anyway because you’re my friend and I don’t want to see you hurt.”

“You have a really terrible way of showing it.”

“So do you. Are you ready to begin?”

“Fine.”

“Do I need to repeat the question?”

Kara sighs and shakes her head. She can’t really believe that she’s here, that they’re doing this, and that Lena continues to act like all of this is normal. “How am I doing? Awful.”

“Can you expand on that?”

“You should really leave interviewing to the professionals. This and cooking are not your strong suits.” Lena waits for Kara to continue, not rising to the barb in the slightest and Kara huffs. “You want me to expand on that? Fine. Let’s see… my best friend has kidnapped me so I’m feeling a bit hurt and confused by that. She implanted a prototype for a mind-control device in my head without my knowledge or consent so I’m feeling a bit betrayed by that. That same device prevents me from using my powers in addition to expressing anger of any kind so I’m feeling, let’s see… I guess you could say I’m feeling disoriented, anxious, and oh yes, angry.”

Kara balls her hands into fists and closes her eyes. In the day since she awoke into this nightmare, she has only had a few instances like this. Anger settles over her in a warm wave and she’s able to ride it for a few seconds. In moments like this when she works herself into feeling angry, she feels normal, powerful for just a little while, before she slipping back under the surface of a cool and tranquil ocean. 

Her fingernails dig into the palms of her hands as she tries to hold on to this feeling. Even when her anger seems to overload the inhibitor, it will not allow her to exert enough force to make her hands bleed. The device in her head makes it impossible to hurt herself or others, a charming bit of programming included with the best of intentions. 

The anger slips away as it always has. Nothing so far has been able to make it stay. It leaves her feeling slightly empty, like waking up from deep sleep or the feeling of calm after crying. 

“How do you feel after that?” Lena asks, looking at her curiously when the emotion has passed.

“Fine,” Kara says without heat or sarcasm in her voice. 

“That anger, the way it passed in the end, would you say it made you feel good?”

“I- I don’t know. I feel calm. Content, maybe.”

Lena does not betray what she thinks of that response. Kara, herself, isn’t sure of how she feels about it. Sometimes it makes her wonder whether she is too angry, whether Lena has a point. Then she feels disappointed in herself for even thinking that and confused about whether that thought was her own. 

“And how are you feeling physically after the device’s implantation? You mentioned that you felt as though the device prevented you from using your powers.”

“Well yeah, isn’t that part of what you designed it to do? Make it so that it prevents me from fighting back?”

“No, not at all,” says Lena. For the first time all session, she seems to be on the defensive. “I didn’t design it so that you couldn’t use your powers at all, I can appreciate how you use them to save lives and do good. Even if all the world’s people were incapable of doing harm accidents would still occur.”

“But I can’t fly, my strength is gone, and I feel strange. Weak and clumsy. I don’t feel like myself. I don’t feel like Supergirl.”

“Think about those instances where you attempted to use your powers.” Lena has shifted into professor-mode, a version of herself that Kara is becoming more and more familiar with. “Were those instances in which using them might have caused someone harm?”

“No,” Kara says immediately. Her powers almost never cause harm. She’s worked so hard, spent years learning how to better keep herself under control. Even Lena’s suggestion that the barest use of her powers could have put herself or Lena in danger is hurtful, to say the least. 

“Tell me about those instances. What was the first indication that your powers seemed to be gone?”

“My first clue was the stool in the kitchen. When we were shouting- when I was shouting, I felt like my control was gone. I was angry and upset, and sometimes when that happens I lose control. I was… angrier than I’ve been in a while and I forgot myself.”

“What is your control like? What is it like to have to keep yourself constantly in check?”

“I… What does this have to do with your research?”

Lena shrugs. “Nothing really. We’ve just never had a real, honest conversation about what it’s like to be Supergirl. I guess I’m curious about your double life. You said that you forgot yourself, that you lost your control. Do you always have to hold yourself back?”

“Well, yeah.” Kara pauses, not sure if she should continue. She shouldn’t trust Lena, shouldn’t be telling her any of this. And yet… doesn’t it feel good to talk about all of this? All of the things she has wanted to tell Lena for years can finally be said and despite the situation they now find themselves in, despite the fact that all of these answers are coerced, a part of Kara just wants to talk to her best friend with total honesty for the first time ever.

So Kara continues. “I had to teach myself as a kid to control my powers. When I came to Earth and the Danvers’ adopted me, I was kept away from others for a while until we could be sure I wouldn’t hurt them. I was so scared the first time I went to high school with Alex.”

“Scared of what?”

“Everything. That I would accidentally bump into someone in the hall and send them flying into the lockers. That I would grip my pencil to hand out of nerves and snap it in half. That I would sneeze and my heat vision would burn a hole in someone. I was suddenly so powerful and alone and all I wanted to do was fit in.”

Lena looks shocked, as though she is seeing Kara again for the first time. “But you got better at controlling your powers over time. By the time we met, you seemed to have no trouble at all.”

“Well, yeah, I’d been practicing for almost fifteen years at that point. But my control over my powers is always something I can feel. It’s always there. I picture it like this tiny ball of ice, sitting at the center of my forehead. I think about it, concentrate on it, and feel it there always.”

“But not when you woke up yesterday.”

“No, and I didn’t notice it until breakfast. I knew something felt wrong but everything about this feels wrong so I couldn’t put my finger on it immediately.”

“It’s interesting that you talk about that feeling at the center of your forehead, almost like a manifestation of the proper function of the prefrontal cortex. That part of the brain in humans is responsible for personality expression, decision making, and social behavior. I haven’t had a chance to study Kryptonian brains, but due to the success of the inhibitor so far I should think they are relatively similar in composition to humans.”

“Right,” says Kara. She hates feeling like she is just a science experiment to Lena. 

“One would assume that the structure of the Kryptonian brain would be drastically different, almost to the point of an additional lobe used to control flight, heat vision, self-sustenance, super-vision, and freeze breath. Just based on what the Kryptonian brain is capable, it would be safe to assume that its size would be larger overall but neither you nor Superman appears visibly dissimilar from humans—”

“—Just stop. Please, stop.” Kara finds herself breathing heavily at the sound of Lena’s voice as she continues on and on about the possibilities of her anatomy. “I don’t know that much about my own biology and I don’t really care but would you please stop talking about me as though I’m some frog you’re about to dissect? You used to be my friend, Lena.”

Kara expects Lena to fight back, is almost begging her to but for the moment, Lena looks suitably chastened. She looks down and refuses to meet Kara’s eye. 

“I apologize,” Lena says stiffly. “I suppose I got carried away.”

“You can say that again,” Kara suspects that’s what this whole project is, an idea that got carried away. But it’s more than an idea now, and Kara can’t excuse what Lena’s done with that logic. 

Lena looks over at the monitor for this first time since their recording session began. They’ve been talking for almost a half-hour. “We should probably wrap this up,” she says still not looking at Kara. 

Kara doesn’t know why the idea of this session ending leaves her feeling disappointed. 

“Can I ask you a few questions?” Kara asks when it looks as though Lena is ready to pack all of this up and head back upstairs. 

Lena pauses by the monitor with its constant red blinking light, ready to end their session officially. “I suppose.”

“Do you wish we could go back to the way things were before? Before there was any of this…” Kara isn’t sure what word to use to describe what there is between them now and she settles on the best one she has. “...tension between us.”

“I would never wish myself ignorant, Kara. No matter how much I miss our friendship, and yes, I think you know enough about me now to know that I do miss it, but I would always choose the truth over lies.”

“Do you think you could ever find a way to forgive me? Especially after what you’ve done to punish me—”

“—Punish you? That’s what you think this is? An act of petty revenge?”

Kara’s brow furrows. “Well, isn’t it?”

Lena shakes her head and smiles cruelly. “Oh no. If I wanted to punish you, Kara, there are easier and more satisfying ways to do so.”

The temperature in the room seems to change. Kara finds herself shivering from the way Lena looks at her now. She isn’t scared, she isn’t quite sure what she is feeling, but she knows she has never felt this way about Lena before.

“Like what? Kryptonite?” Kara lifts her chin, daring Lena to do her worst.

“Please,” Lena scowls. “I don’t want to kill you, Kara. I never have. But sometimes I wish I could show you what it’s like to feel powerless, totally at someone else’s mercy.”

“Your mercy?”

Lena shrugs and turns to a tablet on the closest lab table. A vast frozen plane of silence stretches between them. She taps a few times at the tablet and then pauses, her finger hovering over an option Kara couldn’t see. “Wouldn’t it be interesting to see if I have any left?”

“Of course you do—“

“Kneel.”

Kara’s legs move without her permission. She nearly trips on her way down. Before she realizes what has happened she finds herself looking up into Lena’s face. She seems so tall, so remorseless from down here.

“That was Myriad’s initial purpose, wasn’t it? To bring the world to its knees. Turn everyone into mindless, obedient slaves. I could do that too, couldn’t I? Especially now that I’ve got you here.”

Lena reaches down to touch Kara’s face, a gentle caress Kara hadn’t been expecting. Another shiver goes down her spine and her eyes close just for a second.

When she looks back up into Lena’s face, she sees Lena frown for a moment, as though she’s looking at an equation and come to an answer she hadn’t expected. From the look of her now, she doesn’t seem to know what to do with the answer she has found.

“Perhaps that’s what Lex would do, perhaps that’s what anyone would do if given this kind of power. Absolute power corrupts absolutely, doesn’t it?” Her eyes fall from Kara’s and suddenly Kara feels exposed, here on the floor. “I could tell you to take your clothes off and you’d do it. I could tell you to harm yourself, harm me and you’d do it. You wouldn’t give it a second thought.”

Her mind appears to go elsewhere for a moment, leaving Kara to wonder at her aching knees and how badly she wants to yell at Lena or hold her close, do anything to close this impossible distance between them now.

“Stand up,” says Lena and Kara responds swiftly. They’re eye to eye again. Standing this close, Kara wonders how she has never noticed that Lena is just the slightest bit shorter than her.

“And after all of this, you still trust me. Not all of you, not completely. You’ve watched me steal from you, lie to you, hurt you, control you and you haven’t wavered. You’re either convinced that you can still change me or horrified that you could have been so wrong, afraid to look away from the inevitable crash.” She looks Kara up and down and if she notices their difference in height it doesn’t faze her. “I wonder what you would think of me if I told you to undress yourself. I know what you would do— your hands would fly to your shirt buttons without a thought, but what would you think of me when you were done. Would you hate me? Pity me? Would you wish that I had gone further?”

Kara wonders if there’s still oxygen left in the room, if there is anything left there but Lena and her. If she could speak now, she wouldn’t have the words. She notices everything about Lena now, the way they are standing, the perfume she wears, the smell of her hair. What would she think if Lena asked her to undress? 

More than that, what was this part of her that wanted to go further? That wanted to kiss Lena, pull her close and convince her without words that things don’t have to be this way. 

Lena steps back first. She taps at her tablet furtively and suddenly Kara finds herself able to move again.

“I think we’re done here,” she says refusing to meet Kara’s eyes. She sounds cold and far away and Kara has no idea how to reach her. The red light on the monitor blinks off; the recording has ended. “You can go.”

“Alright,” says Kara. She doesn’t feel like herself. Her head is spinning and she can’t be sure if this is the device in her head or something else. She has no way of knowing if any of this is real or what she wants. All of it could be a product of the implant. 

“I have a lot of information to sift through here, so you’re on your own for dinner. You can ask Hope for help if you need it but I’m sure you’ll manage.”

Kara doesn’t respond to that. Her feet are already leading her up the stairs. It’s for the best that they don’t see each other for a while. She’s more confused than before, unsure of what she is feeling, unsure of whether those feelings are real, unsure of what she is going to do about those feelings if and when they ever make themselves clearer to her.

More than anything, Kara wishes she could go and fly. She isn’t sure if Lena or the inhibitor trusts her not to fly away, but there isn’t any harm in trying. Flying has always helped clear her mind, as though from above, she had a different perspective on her problems. 

She puts on what appears to be workout clothes that she finds in the closet of an empty bedroom. The black spandex leggings and sports bra fit well enough. She decides that if the inhibitor won’t allow her to fly, she’s going to run. It hasn’t stopped her from walking away yet and she’s willing to give it a try. She’s going to fly or she’s going to run, but she needs to clear her head somehow. 

The sky is cloudy again today, but there is blue sky in the distance if she squints hard enough. She isn’t going to get rained on if she leaves the house for a few hours. She steps off of the porch and wet blades of grass sparkling with last night’s rain brush against her legs. Her feet squelch in the soft grass, but she keeps her footing as she makes her way to firmer ground. 

From there two paths seem to lie open before her. The sky or the ground. To run or to fly. Does she trust herself to stay and work things out if she manages to fly? 

With a deep breath and a couple of steps to test out her borrowed sneakers, Kara starts to run for the first time in ages and soon the cabin is out of sight behind her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks again for reading! Happy holidays, everybody! I hope you enjoyed the chapter. 
> 
> As always, you can find me on twitter [@a_ginger_midget](https://twitter.com/a_ginger_midget) and on tumblr [@thegingermidget](https://thegingermidget.tumblr.com/).

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading! I've had this idea stuck in my head since the beginning of the season and I thought that right after the seventh episode was the perfect place for this story to be unleashed. I'm not sure how often I'll update this, but consider it an early present! I'm already working on the next chapter so stay tuned.


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